Microsoft may have gotten a lot of flack over the years (as do most huge tech brands, to be honest) but for the past years or so, they have been creating great mobile related products like apps and programs to adapt to the new digital lifestyle of users. And the apps that they’ve created continue with great updates so that they will also be able to adjust to what users actually need from their smartphones. They’ve released several updates for search app Bing, voice digital assistant Cortana, and lock screen app Next Lock Screen.
Bing may always play second fiddle to that other big search engine that we all use as a verb, but it continue to improve its app in the hopes that people will switch or make it their secondary search engine. The latest update adds more new features, including Bing 360 Search, which lets you search in the real world through augmented reality. You’ll be able to use it with Near Me and Camera Search. It also how has music search so you can look for songs and lyrics quickly, and a smoother and simpler Browser view.
For Cortana, it now has a new list skill which can help you in creating your to-do lists without having to type things out. Just ask Cortana to “create a list” for you and then add things to that list, whether it’s a Holiday list, a work-related task list or a grocery list. And if you already use Wunderlist, one of the more popular list apps out there, you will now be able to incorporate Cortana into it, so you can add due dates to your To-Dos and create shared lists from Wunderlist.
Lastly, Next Lock Screen, which both protects your device and gives you more ways to be productive as well, now supports volume controls on top of your lock screen, as well as more devices that have fingerprint unlock. The GPU performance has also been improved and more importantly, the memory usage the app consumes has been reduced. You can update all three apps now through their respective programs.
